Pope Francis' legacy includes call for climate action
Pope Francis, who died Monday at 88, was an outspoken advocate of tougher moves to address climate change and brought unprecedented Vatican focus to the topic.
The big picture: A first-time papal encyclical on climate, Laudato Si', in 2015 expressed concern about harms to poor people and vulnerable nations.
In 2018, he addressed oil execs (and others) at a Vatican conference where he credited some of their work but called the continued search for new fossil fuel reserves "worrying."
More recently, Francis issued an "Exhortation" in 2023 that lamented the lack of global progress on climate and said "abandonment" of fossil fuels isn't happening fast enough.
He was slated to become the first pontiff to attend an annual UN climate summit that year, but he had to cancel due to illness.
In 2024, he told CBS News that "climate change at this moment is a road to death."
What they're saying: Climate advocates this morning are lauding Francis' influence.
The 2015 encyclical is a "founding text of Christian commitment to climate action, which has inspired & marked a new generation of committed people," said Laurence Tubiana, the former French climate diplomat who helped craft the Paris Agreement, posted on social media today.
The intrigue: Veteran climate journalist Michael Grunwald wrote in 2015 that the encyclical had some "sensible and useful" passages. But it went heavier on topics like "aesthetic education" and "misguided anthropocentrism."
"There are quasi-Marxist passages that sound like Noam Chomsky on acid. There are technophobic passages that sound like they were written by an Amish hippie grad student," he wrote.
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